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368 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
boarding-house, and keeping no equipage. No woman likes to be
looked down upon by any other woman, especially by such a
creature as Mrs. Batters, the lawyer's wife, from Calcutta, who was
not in society, and did not go to Government House, and here was
driving about in the Champs Elysé'es, and giving herself such airs,
indeed ! So was Mrs. Doctor Macoon, with her lady's-maid, and
her man-cook, and her open carriage, and her close carriage.
(Pray read these words with the most withering emphasis which
you can lay upon them.) And who was Mrs. Macoon, pray?
Madame Béret, the French milliner's daughter, neither more nor
less. And this creature must scatter her mud over her betters who
went on foot. " I am telling my poor girls, madame," she would
say to Madame Smolensk, " that if I had been a milliner's girl, or
their father had been a pettifogging attorney, and not a soldier, who
has served his Sovereign in every quarter of the world, they would
be better dressed than they are now, poor chicks !—we might have
a fine apartment in the Faubourg St. Honoré—we need not live at
a boarding-house."
" And if I had been a milliner, Madame la Générale," cried
Smolensk, with spirit, "perhaps I should not have had need to
keep a boarding-house. My father was a general officer, and served
his Emperor too. But what will you ? We have all to do disagreeable
things, and to live with disagreeable people, madame !" And
with this Smolensk makes Mrs. General Baynes a fine curtsey,
and goes off to other affairs or guests. She was of the opinion
of many of Philip's friends. " Ah, Monsieur Philip," she said to
him, " when you are married, you will live far from that woman ;
is it not?"
Hearing that Mrs. Batters was going to the Tuileries, I am
sorry to say a violent emulation inspired Mrs. Baynes, and she
never was easy until she persuaded her General to take her to the
ambassador's, and to the entertainments of the Citizen King who
governed France in those days. It would cost little or nothing.
Charlotte must be brought out. Her aunt, MacWhirter, from
Tours, had sent Charlotte a present of money for a dress. To do
Mrs. Baynes justice, she spent very little money upon her own
raiment, and extracted from one of her trunks a costume which had
done duty at Barrackpore and Calcutta. " After hearing that Mrs.
Batters went, I knew she never would be easy," General Baynes
said, with a sigh. His wife denied the accusation as an outrage ;
said that men always imputed the worst motives to women, whereas
her wish, Heaven knows, was only to see her darling child properly
presented, and her husband in his proper rank in the world. And
Charlotte looked lovely, upon the evening of the ball : and Madame